President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

On one hand, I suppose it's nice to see politicians generally acting like adults for a change. On the other hand, they'd never "come together" if this was a non-Congressional baseball practice. Or non-Congressional anything. Just shows how self-absorbed Washington is.

 

That USA Today story reminds me of the one they did a few years ago about military generals taking high-paying jobs with Defense contractors after they retire. Well, no shit. They retire from the military in their 50s and continue working using expertise that only a few people in the world have? Get out of town!

That being said, it illustrates the importance of the President of the United States completely and definitively removing himself from his business ties. There are enough people trying to buy influence with the federal government that we shouldn't make it easier for people to do so while also hiding their identities.

 

I always enjoyed when they wrote letters yelling at previous letter writers, like a 20th century Facebook comment thread.

 

That is still a thing. It keeps the dialogue going. And no one locks the editorial page.

 

In a few years the entire fucking paper will be locked, and the lights turned off.

 

I think this is a bad case. One that hurts our overall understanding of why a thing happened. If we write a thing off as "it happened because the dude is mentally ill" when he has no identifiable mental illness, I think that just hurts our understanding of something like this.

 

Now even UPS guys are going postal:

At least 2 dead, several hurt in shooting at UPS building in SF

 

I'm all for digging into every possible factor. But I will still think mental illness played a role in every mass shooting. Sane people don't shoot up a baseball practice, co-workers, an elementary school, etc.

 

Unfortunately, in a few days, it'll be back to what passes for normal in the Beltway.

 

How do we know this? It's abhorrent. But I think saying "sane people don't do abhorrent things" is assuredly wrong. And conflating abhorrent actions with mental illness drives the conversation/logical solutions in the wrong direction.

 

I don't think it's either/or. It's a big jigsaw puzzle of things that leads people to commit acts like this. I think mental illness - in some form - plays a role. If I'm proven wrong, that's great. But I'll continue to believe it's one of the factors at play until then.

 

The one commonality to every shooting is a gun with bullets in it being pointed at someone and then fired.